Conversations Overheard Overseas

I just wrapped up a two-week visit to Helsinki. As I was eating dinner in the hotel restaurant one night, I overheard another American businessman having a conversation with some European counterparts. (Just so you know, it wasn’t so much eavesdropping as it was not being able to drown out a very loud voice in an otherwise quiet restaurant).

The American was discussing the upcoming presidential election, and from what I gathered he was a Democrat. I gathered this from his anti-McCain comments (no argument there), but also by his utter lack of concern over the possibility and/or certainty of higher taxes under an Obama administration. After all, he already pays taxes in the US and Switzerland, so what’s the harm in spending even more? In for a penny, in for a pound, I suppose.

But he had another reason for opposing McCain. He said he didn’t want McCain to win because he didn’t want his daughter to grow up in a country where she wouldn’t be able to have an abortion. And then it got really interesting. He asked rather indignantly, “When did we start telling women what they could do with their own bodies?”

Well, let’s see. There have been laws against prostitution in most societies since at least Biblical times. Women have been told what substances they may or may not ingest ever since the dawn of the progressive era about a hundred years ago. These days cities all across the Land of the Free tell women that they can’t smoke, eat trans-fats, or enjoy goose-liver pate. And despite the recent Heller decision, Washington DC continues to tell women that they’re not allowed to defend their own bodies with a gun.

So it seems to me that “we’ve” been telling women what they may or may not do with their own bodies since at least the dawn of recorded history, and “we’re” still doing it. And in most cases both liberals and conservatives have cheered these government intrusions into the private sphere and demanded more to boot. So I find it amusing that anyone from either camp should now express shock and outrage that the government is telling women what they may or may not do with their bodies.

Not to delve too deeply into the abortion issue, but it seems bizarre that a woman’s “right to choose” should allow her to terminate her unborn child’s life, but does not extend so far as to allow her to eat a Big Mac if she happens to get hungry later. If the liberals really care about defending a woman’s right to make her own decisions about her body, then surely that takes all the other paternalistic programs that they do support right off the table.

So here’s a hint for the pro-choice crowd. If you don’t want the government dictating what a woman can do with her body, then don’t ask the government to dictate what women may do with their bodies. Just a thought...